Scientists have long known that there’s a link between heredity and personality – that who we are is in part influenced by who came before us. That doesn’t give you an excuse for, say, being a jerk just because your great-grandpa was. But certain personality traits are affected by our DNA.
I was thinking about that the other day as I stood in a cathedral in Scotland and contemplated a monument there, beneath soaring stained glass, to Sir Archibald Campbell, the first Marquess and 8th Earl of Argyll – a 17th century Scottish nobleman, politician and peer, who I have only lately learned was my 10th great-grandfather. Sir Archibald had a great-great-granddaughter who by marriage became an Anderson, who, in turn, had a great-great granddaughter who was my great-grandmother, Melissa Anderson Smith Smith.
Now, you can’t track all of that, of course, but I do want to say a word about my great-grandmother, who lived into the 1950s. She was legendary in our family in part because of her pride in being a part of it. We call her Melissa Anderson Smith Smith because she twice married a Smith, the second one being the brother of the first, a man whose death left her a young widow with two sons – one of them my grandfather.
It's said that one day Melissa Anderson Smith Smith looked out the window of her home in southern Indiana and sighted with pride my dad and his big brother – who, if you’ve been paying attention, you’ll know were both her great-nephews and step-grandsons. And, anyway, she remarked that they were quite special, which she could tell just by watching how they walked down the street. It was implied, then, from the time that I was able to understand anything, that my family line was different, and I was told that it was recognizable by a certain confidence that seemed to seep out as we moved.
I wasn’t taught that I was better than other people, though I know I certainly was more fortunate, just by being born a white male in mid-20th-century America. But I grew up thinking that I was surely equal to any undertaking I set about – which, I’m sure, was no small factor in making me a confident young man. My wife and I, incidentally, aimed to similarly inspire our daughter – and I don’t actually have time enough here to tell you how terrific she is.
All of which was swirling through my head as I stood the other day in St. Giles Cathedral, in Edinburgh, and contemplated the life-sized marble figure in repose of the First Marquess of Argyll, Sir Archibald Campbell, my 10th great-grandfather. For a decade in the mid-17th century, he was the de facto leader of the Scottish government. The figure, holding a sword as it lies there, is purported to be a good likeness but for one detail: The earl’s head is attached to his body, though in fact it was not upon his burial.
No, Grandpa Archie, as I’ve come to call him, ran afoul of King Charles II – upon whose head Archibald actually had placed the crown in 1651. Their split had to do with the insistence of the Scots that the king ought not to be able to impose upon them his religious preference. Most Scots, including Clan Campbell, were avid Presbyterians, and the king, while nominally a Protestant, was widely perceived as having Catholic sympathies. It’s all complicated historical stuff, but Grandpa Archie was perceived as insufficiently loyal to the king, so he wound up being beheaded in May of 1661, just outside St. Giles Cathedral – his head then placed upon a pike for three years, until it was finally reunited with the rest of him in a grave in rural Argyll.
Steadfast until the end, the Marquess had declared at his execution, “I had the honour to set the crown on the King’s head, and now he hastens me to a better Crown than his own.” That, folks, was a confident man. He was a martyr for freedom.
Back to now – 10 generations later. Last year, researchers at Yale School of Medicine published a new study identifying a number of genetic sites associated with the so-called “Big Five” personality traits: that is, agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion, neuroticism and openness. It’s a step, the scientists said, in understanding better which genetic variants are truly related to those personality traits.
So science can’t yet tell what personality traits I might actually have inherited from the Marquess of Argyll. Was what my great-grandmother saw in my father, for example, a result of traits from that Scottish DNA? Do I have them, too? Well, we can’t yet say.
But it brings me this: Unlike Sir Archibald Campbell, I fortunately live in a time and place that doesn’t empower a government to behead its opponents – so far, anyway – so I’m neither expecting nor wishing to be martyred. But in these tumultuous days in America, I do hope to honor my heritage by being steadfast in opposition to tyranny and in support of freedom in our time. And that freedom, I assert with confidence, is an inheritance we all should treasure and we all must defend, whatever the cost may be.
Rex Smith, the host of The Media Project on WAMC, is the former editor of the Times Union of Albany and The Record in Troy. His weekly digital report, The Upstate American, is published by Substack.
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.
